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In the third meeting of the Making, Art(s) and Design Inquiry Group we continued feedback and support on Portfolio and Reflection practices, introduced Career Connections and discussed how these can be applied in a cross-curricular way throughout different grades and classes.

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With Lodestar just starting out at its current site, building up functional and quality maker spaces can prove challenging. We want to create spaces where maker-centered learning shines, in which students can lead activities and teachers can facilitate collaboration, co-inspiration, and co-critique. Additionally, we want to model other facets of maker-centered classrooms, which are outlined below:

Who are the Teachers?

What Does Teaching Look Like?

What Does Learning Look Like?

What Does the Classroom Look Like?

Students as Teachers

Facilitating Student Collaboration

All of the Above

Tools & Materials

Teachers in the Community

Encouraging Co-Inspiration, Co-Critique

Storage & Visibility

Online Knowledge Sourcing

Redirecting Authority

Figuring it Out

Specific & Flexible Spaces

Tools and Materials as Teachers

Promoting an Ethics of Knowledge Sharing

These characteristics are all essential for learning in a maker-centered classroom, and they set the tone for students guiding their own learning and solving problems independently (Clapp).

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In the second meeting for the Making, Art(s) and Design Inquiry Group held last week, we continued to build on our reflection, critique and portfolio practices, and introduced examples of Critique Protocols. As mentioned in the last blog post, the purpose of these meetings is to discuss integrating portfolio work and documentation, possibly in a wider number of classes, in a way that encourages students to document their thought process. This week we introduced Critique Protocols as a routine of looking closely at other’s work.

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Staff members from the Lighthouse Making, Art(s) and Design Inquiry Group met last week, led by our electives coordinator, Brianna Shahvar, to discuss integrating portfolios and documentation into each of our classes. The purpose of this process is to encourage students to document their own thinking, to look more closely at their projects and/or products, and to share their development with others from teachers to peers and beyond.

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At Lodestar, the academic year is underway, and with the innovative structures that we are implementing, there is always iteration, all the way down to the level of the structure of our lessons. Across the school, and especially in the Making, Art, and Design classes, we want to jump right into making and tinkering, to pique student interest and provide tangible opportunities for students to wrestle with challenging concepts.

Thus, in a maker-centered environment, educators face the following design challenge: how can we structure classes to minimize direct instruction and maximize hands-on activities? In addition, can we accomplish this while providing adequate time for reflection on the activity?More

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For the past three years, Aaron and I have been co-facilitating a two-day workshop called Designing Making Experiences where our goal is to introduce educators to making and maker-centric learning through designing curriculum and prototyping projects that they can take back and use in their classrooms. We teach skills and tools as it becomes appropriate to each educator’s projects but we emphasize that this is not a workshop where they should expect to “get taught” how to use a 3D printer, Arduinos, etc.

While we love the DME workshop model and plan to continue running it, in our own classroom practices, we have been feeling a desire to explore the specific reasons behind why we want students to engage in making projects. The questions we keep returning to in our own practices are:

“How do we design making projects that are purposeful?”
“To what end are students engaging in making?”
“Are the making projects impacting students’ lives in a positive way?”
“If we can’t figure out why we want students to engage in a making project, is the project worth doing?”

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(written by Rachel for Designing Purposeful Making Experiences, Jun 2017)

A few years ago, I biked to a neighborhood church in Berkeley to see Naomi Klein, one of my all-time heroes, speak about her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. During her talk, Klein – a master journalist, speaker, and storyteller – wove a pretty compelling narrative about the social, economic, and political systems that have given rise to climate change, how these systems are failing both the planet and the majority of humanity, and the need to confront and replace these dominant structures in order to weather the proverbial (and not-so-proverbial) storm. As she spoke about the next phase of climate activism, she offered a piece of advice that gave me goosebumps at the time and has stuck with me ever since: “Dream in public.” In other words, our most powerful tool in addressing social inequality and collapsing ecosystems is our collective ability to articulate and iterate a new vision of what might be possible. Our salvation lies in our imagination.

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(written by Lara for Designing Purposeful Making Experiences, Jun 2017)

Purposeful making allows for students to learn by doing. Teachers create safe and enjoyable spaces for students to learn, integrate and apply skills in a collaborative process, Students are able to ask questions, grapple with problems, create, experiment, receive feedback and design solutions to bigger, meanwhile they are taking ownership of their learning process. Prior to the DPME workshop, I have had no knowledge or experience with maker spaces, but I am so excited to learn more so that I can create more meaningful experiences for my students. I used my time in the DPME workshop to absorb as much information as possible and learn from all of the experienced minds in the room. I just completed my third year teaching high school geometry, where I executed the more traditional approach of teaching isolated skills from a textbook because the standards told me to do so. However, a question that constantly haunts me as an educator is “are my students’ learning experiences valuable?” I cannot answer this question affirmatively because the definition of valuable…or purposeful… is so ambiguous in the eyes of students, teachers, and the school. I have been tasked with the challenge to navigate between meeting the common core state standards and creating spaces for students to make meaning of the skills they’re learning. The DMPE workshop encouraged me to design a geometry unit that integrates computer programming with the course standards congruence and rigid transformations.

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(written by Heather for Designing Purposeful Making Experiences, Jun 2017)

In my history class a purposeful making experience needs to combine a purpose for the making with a purpose for the historical understanding. Both parts need to be significant, and the combination of the two purposes should be greater than either one together. Historical understanding enhances the making experience, making enhances the historical understanding.